Cleopatra's Needle

The ancient Egyptian obelisk in London known as Cleopatra’s Needle.

Cleopatra’s Needle is situated in The Victoria Embankment Gardens near the banks of The Thames.

The obelisk has nothing whatsoever to do with Cleopatra. It was already 1000 years old during Cleopatra’s lifetime.

It seems as if every time we visit London we stroll through The Victoria Embankment Gardens and take another gander at Cleopatra’s Needle. Most recently, we did so in 2007, we did so in 2008, and we did so again this year.

The London obelisk’s twin is in New York’s Central Park. Both obelisks were gifted by the Egyptian government to London and New York in the 19th Century.

Central London

Central London, with the spire of All Souls Church, Langham Place, prominent in the background.

We visited All Souls Church this year. My brother and I had explored the church in 2005, but last month’s visit was the first for Joshua and my parents.

All Souls Church, consecrated in 1834, was designed by John Nash, the designer and architect responsible for Regent Street, on which All Souls Church is situated.

London's Comedy Theatre

London’s Comedy Theatre, which opened in 1881—five days after the opening of the famed Savoy Theatre.

The exterior architecture is entirely unremarkable if not undistinguished.

The auditorium is below street level—one proceeds down two steep flights of stairs to reach the stalls. The balcony is at street level. Theatergoers learn that the auditorium is underground only upon entering the theater—no mention of this fact is to be found on the theater’s website.

Although the building has been remodeled at least three times, the auditorium remains as it was in 1881. The auditorium is of no historic or artistic interest. In fact, it may be the least distinguished auditorium among all London theaters.

Like most London theaters, ventilation at the Comedy Theatre is very poor. My brother and I had attended performances at the Comedy Theatre three times prior to this month’s “Betrayal”—we had seen “Journey’s End”, “The Old Masters” and “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?” at the Comedy Theatre—and we had always noticed how poor (and noisy) was the ventilation.

In fact, during the first act of “The Old Masters” performance we had attended, the ventilation had stopped working entirely. Members of the audience began audibly to complain. The buzz from the crowd became so loud that my brother and I feared that Edward Fox and Peter Bowles would stop the performance.

At the intermission, my brother and I asked an usher to inform the house manager of the ventilation woes—but we did so only after observing that no other theater patrons had bothered to stop and have a word with any of the ushers as the patrons made their ways to the crush bars at intermission.

The usher we addressed summoned a well-dressed woman sporting a rhinestone in her pierced nose, and we told the well-dressed woman with a rhinestone in her nose that the ventilation had stopped working, as surely she must already know. She told us that no one had informed her of any ventilation problem—but she checked, and was able to confirm that indeed the ventilation had ceased working. Whatever measures were required to address the situation were taken, because the ventilation was operating by the time the second act was ready to begin. We—and the rest of the patrons—were able to breathe during the second half of “The Old Masters”.

Directly across the street from the Comedy Theatre is a profoundly inexpensive restaurant my brother and I discovered in 2002. It may be London’s least expensive restaurant in which the food is entirely edible. My brother and I used to eat at the restaurant almost every time we attended West End or Covent Garden performances.

Four years ago, my brother and I introduced my parents and Josh to the restaurant one evening—and they found it completely unobjectionable. In fact, they rather liked the place: homey atmosphere; simple, basic food, well-cooked; tables tightly packed together, almost forcing patrons to talk to persons at adjoining tables throughout the meal.

We returned to the restaurant this year, eating dinner there immediately before seeing “Betrayal” across the street.

Everyone was happy to go back. The food was as good and as inexpensive as ever.

London's National Theatre

Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre, a Brutalist concrete structure on the South Bank of The Thames. The National Theatre opened in 1976.

London Theater Performances

We saw five theater performances while we were in London.

The day we arrived, August 4, we caught a 3:00 p.m. matinee performance of Simon Gray’s “Butley” and a 7:30 p.m. evening performance of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal”.

“Butley”, at the Duchess Theatre, was directed by Lindsay Posner and featured Dominic West in the title role.

Gray’s first hit, “Butley” presents—in real time—the collapsing world of a British academic on a single unfortunate afternoon, an afternoon in which the academic loses first his wife, then his boyfriend—and, most lasting of all, his career. The play is a biting and witty tale of a caustic (and not particularly sympathetic) intellectual with a willful streak of self-destruction.

“Butley” is a good play, and has been revived with some frequency since its 1971 premiere. Gray was a literate playwright, writing 20th-Century versions of drawing-room comedies peopled by intelligent persons who have interesting—if not profound—things to say. I had never previously seen a production of “Butley”, although I had studied the text, which “reads” very well.

The current West End production is not good.

West was miscast. He lacked the range necessary to bring Butley to life, although he certainly caught the character’s nastiness and seediness. Of charm there was none—and if Butley does not have a modicum of charm, the play is pointless—and of intellectual depth there was not the slightest suggestion. West’s was a proletarian portrayal of an academic, borrowed from the insufferable proletarian soap operas that thrive on British television.

Without an incandescent actor in the title part, “Butley” does not work. The play becomes little more than a series of recitations of nasty barbs orbiting around a vacant center.

Alan Bates was the original Butley. Many persons believe that Butley was Bates’s greatest role.

My father saw the original production of “Butley” when it transferred from London to New York in 1972. He recalls the production as “thrilling”—and, ever after, he never missed an opportunity to catch Bates onstage. Alas, according to my father, Bates was never able to recapture the magic of Butley in any other role.

Harold Pinter directed the original production of “Butley”. Indeed, Pinter directed ten plays by Gray, including a 2004 production of “The Old Masters”, a play about Joseph Duveen and Bernard Berenson, which my brother and I caught at the Comedy Theatre in London that year.

The 2004 “The Old Masters” was the last Gray play that Pinter directed. Both men were to die from cancer in 2008.

My brother and I saw Pinter outside the stage door of the Comedy Theatre the night we attended “The Old Masters”.

We were reminded of that fact this year, because it was at the Comedy Theatre that we saw Pinter’s “Betrayal” a couple of hours after attending the matinee “Butley”. (My brother and I had also attended a performance at the Comedy Theatre in 2005, when we had seen a staging of “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?”, a Peter Hall production starring Kim Cattrall and Janet Suzman.)

Many knowledgeable persons believe that “Betrayal” is Pinter’s finest—and only enduring—play. Presented in reverse chronology, “Betrayal” depicts the nine-year affair of a married woman—who has taken up with her husband’s best friend.

I dislike “Betrayal”. Although some skill has been exercised in creating the tale, “Betrayal” is a very nihilistic play about three self-centered and ungenerous and nihilistic persons, none of whom possesses a single admirable quality. “Betrayal” is based upon episodes and personages from Pinter’s life, and the persons portrayed onstage are as vapid and unpleasant as Pinter himself.

The current London production does the work no favors. It was a weak and tepid “Betrayal” we encountered at the Comedy Theatre.

The chief fault with the production was Kristin Scott Thomas, who brought nothing to the central role. Thomas had no range, no magnetism, no projection, no profile. Watching Thomas in a stage role was like watching a television actress undertake, for the first time, a complex, multi-faceted role from the classics—and come entirely to grief. “Betrayal” requires an accomplished actress in the central role for the play to register, and Thomas was nothing more than a pipsqueak. Hers was an embarrassing performance.

The director of “Betrayal” was Ian Rickson.

On our second day in London, August 5, we attended an evening performance of Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead” at the Haymarket Theatre (“Theatre Royal Haymarket”, owned by the crown). Four years ago, we had seen “The Last Confession” at Theatre Royal Haymarket. The director of “Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead” was Trevor Nunn.

The Stoppard play was the worst thing we saw in London. The production was simply a mess from start to finish, miscast, misdirected, unable to settle upon a tone, unable to acquire a rhythm, unable to develop momentum. The production was aimless, lacking concentration and propulsion. If one did not already know the text, one would assume that Stoppard’s play was a vast failure, a confused exercise in mere cleverness. Nunn’s “Rosencrantz” was the most listless staging of a Stoppard play I have ever witnessed. It was a trial for us to sit through all three acts.

The following day, August 6, we attended two theater performances: we caught a matinee performance of George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” at the Garrick Theatre; and we caught an evening performance of Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” at The National Theatre.

“Pygmalion” is a very good play, and we enjoyed the performance very much, even though we were cognizant—throughout the afternoon—that we were not witnessing an exceptional production.

Rupert Everett portrayed Higgins. He was not particularly good, but he was not as bad as I had feared. His Higgins was a very odd man, odder even than the script suggests, but I suspect a focus upon Higgins’s oddness was the only way for Everett to get through the part.

The Eliza was a young television actress. She was attractive, and carried some innate appeal, but she was not a natural stage actress, and was convincing neither as guttersnipe nor as lady. She probably had been cast because she is a known quantity to BBC viewers.

The primary pleasures in the production came from the fine stage design and costume design as well as the fine supporting cast, which was genuinely top-notch. Every subsidiary part had been expertly cast, and the supporting crew was immeasurably better than the Higgins and Eliza. Diana Rigg played Mrs. Higgins, and she was delightful. We wished her part had been larger.

The director of “Pygmalion” was Philip Prowse.

“Pygmalion” received its first performance in Vienna, in German translation, at what is now the Burgtheater. The first English-language production was in New York. London was the third city to see Shaw’s play (Shaw himself directed the first London production).

Shaw’s most-performed play in the English-speaking world, “Pygmalion” is the only Shaw play that has entered the repertory in non-English-speaking countries. France, Germany and Russia, all countries with rich theatrical histories and cultures, have witnessed countless productions of “Pygmalion” in the last hundred years.

The evening performance of “The Cherry Orchard” was the London production we had most wanted to see—and, and as a result, we had deliberately made “The Cherry Orchard” our final theater performance.

“The Cherry Orchard” was presented at the Olivier Theatre, National Theatre’s venue with the thrust stage. The production was directed by Howard Davies. The staging had received great acclaim, and had sold out all performances, and we were very keen to see it. In fact, we had purchased our tickets the very hour August performances had gone on sale via The National Theatre website—and, had we waited a few hours, we would not have been able to obtain tickets.

The production was fascinating, but much over-praised.

A new translation had been commissioned, and the translation was very poor. The translation was packed with preposterous contemporary references and phrases, and instantly became jarring. People in Russia in 1904 did not converse like Londoners in 2011, and it was a grave error for the translator to have couched Chekhov’s tale in the kind of contemporary dialogue one might hear at a London coffee shop. The excellent Michael Frayn translation should have been used instead (The National has used the Frayn translation in the past).

The cast was good, but the cast members were unable to evoke anything remotely Russian in their performances. This was a very, very British staging—with more than a whiff of British provincial theater permeating the production—and the acting styles onstage were more apt for a dreary domestic drama examining Britain’s lower classes, such as John Osborne’s “The Entertainer”, than a Chekhov play.

Zoe Wanamaker’s Madame Ranevskaya was portrayed, above all, as an irritating figure. In the last fifteen years, it has become a widespread practice in British theater for main characters in classic dramas to be portrayed as deliberately irritating. This practice, I believe, is intended to add “complexity” to characterizations of roles over-familiar to audiences—but the practice is, at bottom, a boneheaded idea as well as an idea bereft of genuine thought. An actress or director that must transform Madame Ranevskaya into an irritant in order to lend the portrayal a degree of “depth” has not thought long enough and hard enough about the role or the play.

Given how gruesome was the translation, and given how un-Russian was the staging, “The Cherry Orchard” was, largely, engrossing. However, the script was played as pure domestic drama, with little exploration of other important issues raised in the text. Such a constricted, small-scale interpretation of “The Cherry Orchard” reduces the power and range of Chekhov’s greatest play.

Oddly, Joshua and I had seen a truer vision of Chekhov’s final play two years ago, when we had attended a performance of “The Cherry Orchard” in Baltimore. That production had been presented by tiny Everyman Theater, the smaller of Baltimore’s two professional repertory theater companies.

Everyman Theater did not have a cast as talented as that onstage in London, nor was it able to employ a fraction of the design budget available to The National Theater. Nonetheless, the Baltimore “Cherry Orchard” had been twenty times more affecting than the current London staging—and the Baltimore production had enjoyed a vastly superior Madame Ranevskaya in Deborah Hazlett, who had given a truly remarkable performance (Josh wrote about Hazlett and that “Cherry Orchard” in April 2009). Hazlett had been a glowing Madame Ranevskaya; in comparison, Wanamaker was a mere bundle of nerves, having wandered in off the set of “East Enders”.

We last had attended a performance at The National Theatre in 2008, when we had endured a matinee performance of Michael Frayn’s “Afterlife”, an unsuccessful play about Max Reinhardt.

The National Theatre continues to deteriorate.

The interiors sport more grime with each return visit, the carpets and furnishings become still more tatty, and the unattractive warren-like public spaces evince a grim, prison-like atmosphere. The building is an eyesore, inside and out, one of the great architectural disasters of the 1970s. Constructed from the very cheapest materials, the building looks as if it had been intended for a very brief lifespan.

The building is now thirty-five years old. It is time for the structure to be replaced.

The Mariinsky Ballet In London

While we were in London, we caught two performances of the Mariinsky Ballet at The Royal Opera House.

On Monday night, August 8, we attended a performance of “Swan Lake”. On Saturday night, August 13, we attended a performance of “La Bayadere”.

My parents and Josh and I last saw the Mariinsky in February of last year, when we had traveled to Washington for a very long weekend—a weekend in which we had caught the Mariinsky Ballet at the very end of a Washington run of performances and the Bolshoi Ballet at the very beginning of a Washington run of performances. That weekend, we had seen the Mariinsky dance “The Sleeping Beauty”.

The Mariinsky “Sleeping Beauty” presented in Washington last year was a Soviet-era production first staged by Konstantin Sergeyev in 1952. The production was peculiar: it failed to follow the scenario; it cut Tchaikovsky’s score to shreds; and the production design was abundantly unattractive. The Sergeyev “Sleeping Beauty” has—incomprehensibly—remained in the Mariinsky repertory ever since it was first mounted fifty-nine years ago (with a short-term exception to be noted below).

The Mariinksy “Swan Lake” we saw in London last week also was a Soviet-era production, dating from 1950—and it, too, had been first staged by Sergeyev. The Sergeyev “Swan Lake” has been in the Mariinsky repertory for sixty-one years.

To Westerners, it seems odd that the Mariinsky continues to present productions unveiled under Stalin. However, the Sergeyev productions, never acclaimed in the West, are unaccountably popular within Russia. Over time, Russian audiences became accustomed to the corrupt Sergeyev versions of various 19th-Century works—with the result that the Sergeyev productions now retain a tenacious hold on Russian affections. Mariinsky administrators that have attempted to replace the Soviet-era productions have been thwarted time and again. A few years ago, the Sergeyev “Sleeping Beauty” was at last retired with great fanfare, and a new production installed. The new production, appreciated in the West but disliked by Russian dancegoers, was quickly shelved, and the Sergeyev production swiftly reinstated, an inconceivable development in the eyes of those in the West.

Like the Mariinsky “Sleeping Beauty”, the Mariinsky “Swan Lake” also used a corrupt score and a corrupt scenario (as well as suffered from exceedingly unattractive designs)—and, much like the Mariinsky “Sleeping Beauty”, the Mariinsky “Swan Lake” has never been respected in the West.

The Mariinsky “Swan Lake” is the infamous “happy ending” Swan Lake, in which Von Rothbart is stripped of his wings and killed while Odette and Siegfried are allowed to live on. The production displays a pronounced fondness for jesters, prancing courtiers and other extraneous nonsense—yet the Mariinsky “Swan Lake” is nowhere near as bad (or as garish) as the Mariinsky “Sleeping Beauty”. If one can ignore the jesters and happy ending (as well as the mangled version of Tchaikovsky’s score), the Mariinsky “Swan Lake” was highly enjoyable, even magnificent.

It was magnificent because of the dancing.

The corps de ballet of the Mariinsky is of an amazing standard, a standard no other company can hope to match. It is the amazing flexibility of the backs of Mariinsky dancers that always first captures my attention. The ballerinas stretch and bend their backs with a suppleness and uniformity and subtlety of expression that are unknown to dancers in the West—and such qualities lend the ensemble work a magical power.

The arms and necks and upper-body carriage of Mariinsky dancers are astonishing; refinement and uniformity are always on display. Watching the Mariinsky corps de ballet execute its steps is, for me, always the highlight of a Mariinsky performance—and the corps was indeed wondrous in Acts II and IV of “Swan Lake”.

The Odette/Odile was Ekaterina Kondaurova and the Siegfried was American David Hallberg, making a guest appearance with the Mariinsky.

Casting for the August 8 “Swan Lake” had been changed twice after we had purchased our tickets from The Royal Opera House website. We were in no way disappointed, even though we had been promised first Diana Vishneva and then Uliana Lopatkina, the Mariinsky’s two most-renowned ballerinas (the performance had become sold out while Vishneva’s name still appeared on the casting list). Days before the Mariinsky dancers landed in London, Kondaurova was announced as the Odette/Odile for the performance of August 8.

Kondaurova was an excellent Odette/Odile. Better in the lakeside acts than in Act III, where her Odile struck me as brittle and unnatural (and perhaps a bit forced), Kondaurova is a major ballerina. Kondaurova should be better-known in the West—she is a dancer of astonishing technique yet capable of expressing drama and emotion as well as evoking heartbreak. Kondaurova is a far finer dancer than any principal I have encountered over the last dozen years at American Ballet Theatre or at The Royal Ballet or at The Paris Opera Ballet. The depth of Russian ballet talent is limitless.

Hallberg did not give a memorable performance. His characterization of Siegfried struck me as faceless, lacking in princely profile, lacking in personality and lacking in charm. Kondaurova totally overwhelmed Hallberg whenever both dancers were onstage at the same time. Their partnership was a steak-and-mutton pairing.

In fairness, I must note that Hallberg had the unpleasant assignment of trying to lend some semblance of life to Act I, by far the weakest act of the Mariinsky production.

The Mariinsky orchestra had been imported from Saint Petersburg for the duration of the three-week London engagement. The orchestra was off-form in “Swan Lake”—and the tempi were far too slow, as is generally the case in Mariinsky performances.

Acts I and II were performed without an intermission, yet there was an intermission between Acts III and IV. In my view, “Swan Lake” must be performed either with three intermissions or with one intermission: there must be an intermission after each act; or there must be a single intermission after Act II, with each palace act seamlessly followed by a lakeside act. Offering “Swan Lake” with two intermissions makes no sense whatsoever—and this is especially so since Act IV is the shortest of the four acts, lasting only twenty minutes.

Despite the shortcomings, we loved every minute of the Mariinsky “Swan Lake”. It was a privilege to see such a great ballet company in one of the 19th Century’s seminal works of Classicism.

The performance of “La Bayadere” we attended five nights later involved an even older Soviet-era production, a “Bayadere” production dating from 1941 (the year Hitler invaded Russia).

My parents and Josh and I had attended a performance of “La Bayadere” in November, when we had seen the Boston Ballet production, a production largely derived from Rudolf Nureyev’s Paris Opera Ballet staging (but with different stage designs).

When I wrote about Boston Ballet’s “La Bayadere”, I wrote at some length about the two different versions of “La Bayadere” most frequently encountered in the West: Natalia Makarova’s 1980 production for New York-based American Ballet Theatre; and Nureyev’s 1992 production for Paris.

At the time, I also mentioned the 2001 Mariinsky production, a production reconstructed from the 1900 Marius Petipa staging. The Mariinsky “La Bayadere” of 1900 was the final production of Petipa’s 1877 original that the choreographer supervised during his lifetime. The 2001 Mariinsky reconstruction had been based upon dance notation from the 1900 production as well as Ludwig Minkus’s original score and orchestrations, unearthed in 2000 in the Mariinsky library.

The 2001 Mariinsky reconstruction of the 1900 Petipa production had proved to be a sensation in the West (it was first shown in New York and London in 2003, and caused critics to revise wholesale their opinions of the ballet)—and I had always assumed that the Mariinsky had permanently abandoned the corrupt 1941 production once it had mounted the 2001 reconstruction of Petipa’s final staging.

I had been wrong. The Mariinsky reverted to the corrupt 1941 production of “La Bayadere” in 2004 (“except for special occasions”, according to the Mariinsky program booklet), and has danced the corrupt 1941 version ever since. The pristine “Bayadere” unveiled in 2001 did not prove to be popular in Russia, where audiences had become so accustomed to the corrupt 1941 version that they had demanded its return.

We had eagerly looked forward to the 2001 Mariinsky reconstruction—and we were disappointed that the old Soviet version was being offered in its place. We discovered what we had gotten ourselves into long before leaving for London—but long after we had already purchased our tickets. We would never have purchased tickets—very expensive tickets—for “La Bayadere” had we known that the 1941 Soviet-era production was the production scheduled for London.

The 1941 production uses a specious score, much not from Minkus’s pen (and with completely different orchestrations, all created by a variety of anonymous hands), and it omits all of Act IV and portions of Acts I through III. The 1941 production ends—as did the Boston Ballet production—with “The Kingdom Of The Shades” scene, robbing the ballet of any sensible dramatic conclusion (but providing a ridiculous if not ludicrous happy ending, first introduced in 1924 under pressure from the Lenin regime, which favored “happy endings” in entertainments for “the masses”).

I cannot understand the Mariinsky’s perpetuation of corrupt Soviet-era stagings. Ballets warranting revival should be presented after thorough research of the most pristine source materials, and with original scores emanating from the pit. (The Mariinsky’s Soviet-era productions are also in dire need of re-costuming.) Ballet stagings in Russia should no longer be based upon the type of production Stalin found pleasing.

The dancing provided the only pleasure to be derived from the current Mariinsky “La Bayadere”—and the dancing was undeniably glorious.

The corps was in stunning form all night—and not solely in “The Kingdom Of The Shades” scene, which came across with stupendous impact (32 ballerinas were used, as in Nureyev’s Paris production, unlike the 24 ballerinas used in the Boston production and Makarova’s ABT production). Even in the brief formal dances of Acts I and II, the Mariinsky corps was incomparable.

Two of the three principal dancers were excellent—and, unlike “Swan Lake”, with its two changes of casting, there had been only one change of casting for “La Bayadere” after we had purchased our tickets.

We had ordered tickets for what purportedly was to be a Vishneva performance. Two days after our order had been placed, the performance was listed as “sold out”—and, two days after that, Vishneva’s name was removed from the cast listing.

We heard countless complaints from patrons of The Royal Opera House about the casting shenanigans connected to the Mariinsky’s visit to London. As soon as performances with the Mariinsky’s biggest stars became sold out, those very same stars were shifted to performances for which sales had been weakest. No one knows whether the perpetrator of this nasty scheme was the Mariinsky itself, The Royal Opera House or Victor Hochhauser, the impresario presenting the London engagement.

Happily, we were able to experience Lopatkina if not Vishneva, because Lopatkina danced Nikiya at the August 13 “La Bayadere” performance—and she was magnificent.

Lopatkina is a spectacular ballerina—one cannot take one’s eyes from her while she is onstage—and the kind of dancer one rarely encounters in the West: blazing technique, glamorous stage presence, deep musicality, surefire dramatic instinct, vivid yet natural projection, charisma to burn. With the slightest tilt of the head, Lopatkina could evoke the kind of stage tension normally associated with Hamlet’s soliloquy or Otello’s “Credo”. I would go see Lopatkina nightly if she danced in Minneapolis. She is one of the greatest dancers I have ever seen.

The Solor was Daniel Korsuntsev. Korsuntsev was quite good in what is, all in all, a rather thankless role. Korsuntsev possessed some stage presence and exhibited the virtuosity dancegoers have come to expect from Russian male dancers. However, Korsuntsev did not strike me as a particularly thoughtful or subtle or polished artist.

Anastasia Kolegova danced Gamzatti—and she was a cipher on the stage alongside Lopatkina and Korsuntsev. Kolegova basically got lost amid the onstage proceedings—but it did not matter, because Lopatkina was so riveting.

Before the performances, I had worried about my brother attending two evening-length ballet performances within five days. My brother, like practically everyone, enjoys “Swan Lake”, but I was uncertain whether he would be able to tolerate “La Bayadere”.

My brother made it through both evenings without stress—and it was two long evenings we endured: the performance of “Swan Lake” lasted three hours and ten minutes; and the performance of “La Bayadere” lasted three hours and fifteen minutes.

My brother enjoyed “Swan Lake” immensely (other than its gruesome first act). He thought “La Bayadere” was rather silly—which of course it is—but he enjoyed watching Lopatkina and the corps. He did not regret the time spent in The Royal Opera House.

London press reviews of the Mariinsky’s three-week visit to The Royal Opera House were shockingly provincial. Other than Clement Crisp writing for The Financial Times, we did not encounter a single critical notice, in any of the London newspapers, covering any of the six programs the Mariinsky toured to London, that exhibited even the slightest sophistication. The reviews were public exhibitions of extravagant ignorance, both about the Mariinsky and about the art form itself.

London During The Blitz?

No. London last night.

Happily, we were miles and miles from the rioting and looting.

London Perceived

Departure: tomorrow. Return: the 14th.

London’s Imperial War Museum

London’s Imperial War Museum, one of my favorite museums anywhere.

My middle brother and I have explored the museum and its collections exhaustively. We surely have visited the museum a dozen times.

When we last visited the museum in September 2007, my brother and I spent half a day guiding my parents and Joshua through a portion of the museum. We explored the giant atrium, where large-scale weapons and aircraft are on display, and we explored the art galleries. We also visited a large two-level special exhibition, “The Children’s War”, which examined the experiences of children during World War II. “The Children’s War” was supposed to be a temporary exhibition, but it remains on view today. It must have proved to be popular with visitors.

This year we plan to show my parents and Josh the rest of the museum. We plan to spend one entire day exploring the World War I galleries and the first half of the Holocaust exhibition. We plan to spend a second entire day exploring the World War II galleries and the second half of the Holocaust exhibition.

The two-level Holocaust exhibition is too sad to view the entire exhibition in one visit.

It is the finest Holocaust exhibition to be seen anywhere. The Holocaust exhibition at The Imperial War Museum puts the Holocaust Museum in Washington to shame.

We plan once again to see the art galleries, entirely reinstalled since 2007, and the atrium, with its giant weapons.

If we have any remaining time, we shall visit the display devoted to espionage and the exhibition room devoted to Field Marshall Montgomery. Everything else at The Imperial War Museum will be of limited interest to my parents and Josh, and we shall skip the other exhibitions, most of which are devoted to various 20th-Century British peace-keeping operations.

My mother will not object to spending two entire days at The Imperial War Museum. She will enjoy the exhibitions devoted to both World Wars, she will be moved by the Holocaust exhibition, and she will enjoy viewing the newly-installed art galleries. She also knows how much my father wants to explore the core of the museum’s collections.

Happily, The Imperial War Museum maintains an excellent restaurant. We shall be happy to have lunch in the museum restaurant both days.

Ageless London

I am starting to get excited about our upcoming trip. I generally start to get excited about one month prior to a departure.

We shall leave on August 3 and return on August 14. Our initial plan was to travel between August 5 and August 14, but we extended our travel period by two days once we ascertained that there were seven performances we wanted to catch in London.

The first five days will be spent in London. The second five days will be spent in Southern England.

I find London the most fascinating city in the world. London is not the most beautiful city in the world, nor the most charming, but I find it endlessly fascinating.

My sister-in-law tells me that she does not miss London. She tells me that visiting London is one thing, and living there quite another. She says that she could never live in London again. I think, above all, she appreciates the spaciousness of the U.S. as well as the lack of red tape Americans enjoy.

My sister-in-law finds it amusing that we are interested in historic London churches. My middle brother and I have visited far more London churches than she has—and we have a long list of London churches we visited in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 that we want Josh and my parents to see for the first time next month.

Reviewing the list of churches, my sister-in-law asks me, “Isn’t this going to be frightfully boring?” Then she identifies the handful of churches on our list in which she has attended funerals—the only reason she has ever visited those particular churches—and says, one by one, “Are you SURE you want to visit this church? I wouldn’t go out of my way to see this one.”

In fact, only one of our five days in London will be devoted to historic churches. Two days will be devoted to The Imperial War Museum and two days will be devoted to theater (matinee and evening performances both days). We shall try to visit a couple of other interesting things on the mornings of our theater days.

This year, our visit to London is governed, as a practical matter, by performance schedules. We have managed to squeeze five plays and two ballet performances into five days and six nights in London—with everything else tailored to the performance schedules.

As soon as we get back from Britain, Josh and I will head for Oklahoma to spend ten days with Josh’s family.

We must do these things while we may.

After Labor Day, Josh and I will be working.

Home

Joshua and I arrived home Thursday night. It was just past 9:30 p.m. local time when we turned into my parents’ driveway.

We were exhausted. The previous week had been devoted to Josh’s graduation and its attendant activities and out-of-town guests. The weekend had been devoted to packing and cleaning. Tuesday had been devoted to the movers and a final cleaning of the apartment. Wednesday and Thursday had been devoted to driving across half the country. By the time we got home, we had no energy left.

My mother had a meal waiting for us—she had instructed us to give her a call when we were one hour from the house, and we had done so—and Josh and I sat down as soon as we entered the house and ate chicken breasts baked in a cream/pepper sauce, seasoned rice, green beans and a tomato/cucumber salad. Half an hour after eating, we turned in. We had been too tired even to make much of a fuss over the dog, who had been so excited to see us that he ran and jumped in circles in the back yard for fifteen minutes before Josh and I attempted to go into the house.

It was wise for us to have turned in early on Thursday night, because on Friday morning the dog wanted us to get up at 5:45 a.m.

My father rose at 5:30 a.m. on Friday solely and specifically to get the dog out of our hair, but my father’s noble efforts were not entirely successful—the dog was delighted that my father had risen early, but that only made the dog more insistent that Josh and I rise, too. When my father tried to get the dog to go downstairs with him, the dog started to bark, as if he were alerting my father that my father had somehow forgotten about Josh and me.

To prevent the dog from waking my mother, Josh and I got up, too.

We were not cross. We knew the dog was excited to have us home, and we knew that we had not given him an extended amount of affection the night before. We were, consequently, happy to give him a lengthy early-morning romp in the park, which he enjoyed immensely.

We enjoyed it, too.

When we returned home, we gave the dog his cereal, cleaned up, and joined my father in the kitchen. We drank coffee, and ate grapefruit and cereal, and waited for my mother to come downstairs. Once my mother joined us, we ate strawberries and cream, but we ate nothing more. That was all the breakfast we had wanted on Friday.

In honor of our return, my father had taken Friday off. We had nothing scheduled for Friday except a visit from my sister-in-law and my nephew and niece, who were going to join us for the day. Josh and I had not seen them since Christmas, and we very eager to see them—and they were very eager to see us.

They came over in the middle of the morning. My nephew and niece were all smiles—they knew Josh and I were home for good—and Josh and I played with them all day (as did my father). We spent much of the day in the back yard, where my nephew likes to play kickball (his personal version of soccer, with his own unique rules) and where my niece likes to walk with her grandmother and smell the flowers (and have her dolls smell the flowers).

We had tuna-noodle casserole for lunch, a favorite lunch of my nephew and niece, and peaches and cream.

When the kids were taking their naps, we talked with my sister-in-law, who has decided that she is very happy in Minneapolis.

Late in the afternoon, my brothers joined us. To mark our return, my mother had planned a special dinner at which we were to celebrate Josh’s graduation.

We did not have anything fancy, but it was a big dinner: a garden salad with twelve or fifteen different fresh vegetables; sesame shrimp served with bowtie pasta; and a plain pot roast served with mashed potatoes, lima beans, baby carrots and a pineapple-nut salad. For dessert, my mother had baked a white graduation cake and decorated it with pink and yellow roses and green vines.

My family had intentionally waited until Friday night to give Josh his graduation gifts.

My parents’ gift was probably the best gift: a certificate for hand-crafted law diploma and bar membership frames from one of Minneapolis’s finest art shops. I had received the same gift from my parents upon receiving my Juris Doctor, and it is the perfect gift for a recent law school graduate. Quality hand-crafted frames with top-of-the-line wood and non-glare glass are exorbitantly expensive.

My older brother and my sister-in-law gave Josh a framed reprint of a Daumier drawing depicting a courtroom proceeding.

My middle brother gave Josh a boxed set of Trollope’s six-novel series, “The Pallisers”. There is a complicated (and not particularly interesting) back-story to my middle brother’s gift, and I shall not tell it here.

My nephew and niece gave Josh a DVD set of the 1970s British documentary series, “The World At War”. An unusual graduation gift, “The World At War” is what my nephew wanted to give Josh—my nephew actually had suggested the gift himself. My nephew watches an episode from the series a couple of times a week, most often during the hour before dinner, when he needs distraction while my sister-in-law prepares food. He is fascinated, I believe, by the eerie black-and-white film clips of grim and wanton destruction, by the riveting title and credit music, and by Laurence Olivier’s voice, all of which seize his attention and make him unaccountably cheerful. When my nephew overheard my brother and sister-in-law discussing potential graduation gifts for Josh, he piped in and pointed to what he was watching and said, “Get him this”—and my brother and sister-in-law accepted the recommendation.

My gift to Josh was a watch.

Cake and gift-giving were wrapped up by 8:30 p.m. so that my older brother and my sister-in-law could take the kids home and put them to bed.

My middle brother stayed behind for a couple of hours, and he and Josh and I were able to catch up while we washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen.

Josh and I rose at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday in order to take care of the dog. It was no burden, as Josh and I were still operating on East Coast time. We were happy to take the dog to the park so that my parents might sleep in.

After we had returned from the park and cleaned up, Josh and I waited in the kitchen for my parents to come downstairs.

At 7:15 a.m., my middle brother arrived. He knew Josh and I would be up, and he had come over to join us for breakfast.

My father came downstairs just before 8:00 a.m., and my mother came downstairs at 8:30 a.m.—and we decided to have a decent but not major breakfast. We had eggs baked in cream, and bacon, and toast, and orange juice and cranberry juice.

After breakfast, while we were waiting for my older brother and his family to join us for the day, my parents informed my middle brother and Josh and me that we had precisely one week in which to make necessary plans for our August trip to Britain, and that we had to have our plans in place no later than Monday, June 13, in order that bookings be made.

Consequently, this week will be devoted to making travel plans. We have already decided that we may have to lengthen our planned travel period beyond ten or eleven days—we have identified five plays we want to see in London, and we have discovered that the Mariinsky Ballet will be performing at The Royal Opera House while we will be in London—and we shall spend the next few days preparing a genuine (and final) itinerary.

The five plays we want to see in London, all with fine casts, are “Betrayal”, “Butley”, “The Cherry Orchard”, “Pygmalion” and “Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead”. My parents will be happy to see those five plays, and my brother will be happy to see those five plays.

The Mariinksy will offer several different programs in London, but I think we will focus on performances of “Swan Lake” and “La Bayadere”—and attempt to get tickets for performances in which the great Diana Vishneva is cast (whom none of us, alas, has ever seen). My brother, whose interest in ballet is limited, will enjoy “Swan Lake”, and he will be able to sit through “La Bayadere”.

The Proms will be under way during our stay in London, but none of the Proms programs for the first half of August is of interest to us—and, further, I think we all got more than our fill of the Proms in 2007, when we had attended four Proms concerts. The Royal Albert Hall is a very poor concert venue, and the acoustics (and ventilation) of The Royal Albert Hall are dismaying. The series known as the Proms provides one of the worst ways on the planet for music-lovers to hear serious music. In my view, the Proms as currently presented should be discontinued.

It was the middle of the morning when my older brother and his family arrived.

The first words out of my nephew’s mouth when he got out of the car: “Are we going to the lake?”

Last Saturday, the start of Memorial Day Weekend, everyone in my family had gone up to the lake for the first time this year—and my nephew somehow had it into his mind that everyone was going to the lake again on Saturday.

“No. We won’t be going up to the lake again until July 4” his mother answered.

“When is July 4?” was my nephew’s next question.

“In another month” was his mother’s response.

“How many weeks is that?” came next.

“Four.”

“Will it be snowing by then?”

“No. There won’t be snow again for a long time.”

“How come it doesn’t snow when we are at the lake?”

“Because we never go in winter. We stay home in winter.”

“I want to go to the lake when it snows.”

“It would be too cold. The lake house does not have central heating.”

“There’s a fireplace.”

“Yes, but the fireplace cannot heat the entire house.”

“We could get two fireplaces.”

“Two fireplaces would not be enough. The house would have to have central heating.”

“Why don’t we get central heating?”

“I don’t think anyone wants to go to the lake in winter.”

“I do.”

“Well . . . I don’t think anyone else is too keen on going to the lake in winter.”

“I could go by myself.”

“No, you couldn’t. Someone would have to go with you.”

“Who wants to go with me?” was my nephew’s next question, directed at everyone.

My father picked up my nephew and swung him around and told him that he couldn’t go to the lake by himself until he was sixteen—and, at age sixteen, that he would not want to go to the lake as long as school was in session.

“Yes, I would” was the answer, at which point my father told him, “When you’re sixteen, you will have a different view, I assure you.”

“No, I won’t” was my nephew’s response. “I’ll want to go to the lake every weekend, even when it snows.”

“We’ll see about that” were my father’s next words, and he swung my nephew again.

My nephew loves spending time at the lake. According to my parents, he fell in love with the lake last July 4, when everyone except Josh and me (trapped in Boston) spent a week at the lake.

My nephew had been at the lake many times before July 4 of last year—my family, whenever possible, spends a full week at the lake coincident with July 4 each year and, in addition, spends a further few weekends at the lake each year between Memorial Day and Labor Day—but last year apparently was the first time my nephew was old enough to begin to appreciate the tranquility and beauty to be found at the lake.

Even though he was unable to return to the lake for a second consecutive weekend, my nephew had a great Saturday.

What with his father and uncle and grandfather and Josh and me to join him, my nephew had lots of games he wanted to play on Saturday. Indeed, I believe we went through much of his current repertory of outdoor games on Saturday.

He still plays ESPN Better Batter Baseball—he is the only one ever to hit and run bases, while everyone else permanently mans the outfield—and he has different versions of kickball depending upon the number of players available. He will play croquet, but he has his own set of rules, a set of rules that enables him always to win. He likes to jump up and down on what resembles a very small and watered-down version of a trampoline, a gizmo created especially for children (and, when he does so, the dog goes nuts).

He likes to play hide-and-seek. When we play hide-and-seek, only he hides. Although the rest of us are supposed to have our eyes closed while he hides, we watch in the reflection of a window to see where he goes. We do this in order to keep an eye on him as well as to prevent ourselves from finding him. During our search, we look everywhere except where he is hiding—and he always finally gives himself away first by giggling and then by coming out from his hiding place and exclaiming, “You couldn’t find me!”

We had a ball.

We had chicken-salad sandwiches and Amish sweet pickles for Saturday’s lunch—another favorite lunch of my nephew and niece—and we had peanut butter cookies my mother had baked.

While the kids were taking their naps, my brothers and I went to the care facility to sit with our grandmother for two hours. She recognized none of us.

For Saturday’s dinner, we had stuffed pork chops—my nephew loves stuffed pork chops—served with cheddar potatoes, peas, parsnips, baked red cabbage and apple salad. For dessert, we ate homemade ice cream and fresh raspberries.

After dinner, my older brother and his family went home. Once again, my middle brother stayed behind for a couple of hours, and he and I had a good talk.

My brother recently dropped the young woman he had been seeing for well over a year—a young woman in Omaha whom my brother had met at a church function and whom he considered his girlfriend—and, for the first time, I asked him about that.

“It was never going to work out” was his short answer.

I never was certain whether he was entirely serious about her—he had never introduced her to anyone in the family, which suggested something significant, not only to me but to everyone else—and he had never talked about her to my parents (although he did talk about her to my older brother and, especially, to my sister-in-law, whose advice, counsel and insight he had sought several times).

I believe that my brother decided, ultimately, that the young woman in Omaha was not the woman with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life—in which case he made a very wise decision to break things off.

My brother has been unlucky in romance. Once engaged to a spoiled princess from Rolling Hills, California, he was wise to break off that engagement. (Four years ago, Josh told the full story of that engagement on his weblog.)

The young woman from Rolling Hills—she has since married and separated—never returned my brother’s engagement ring.

After the passage of several months, my father contacted the princess’s father, a high-powered partner in the Los Angeles office of a national law firm, to let him know that the ring had not been returned.

“She lost or misplaced it” was the answer my father received—at which point my father placed a number of discreet telephone calls to influential corporate attorneys and corporate executives around the country, all persons he had known for years and years and years. The result: the Los Angeles office of that particular national law firm lost over $7 million of annual billings before the month was out, as several major corporate clients switched law firms.

That office’s profitability disappeared virtually overnight—and it affected the ongoing viability not only of the Los Angeles office but the firm itself. The Los Angeles office had to lay off ever-increasing numbers of attorneys and staff members over the following three years, was forced to relocate to cheaper (and much less opulent) office premises, saw its best local talent flee to other firms, and ultimately was forced to engineer a merger with a stronger firm—on very unattractive terms.

Things might have turned out differently had a prominent lawyer and his princess daughter acted in an honorable manner with respect to the return of an engagement ring.

For Josh and me, Sunday got off to an early start—the dog chooses not to sleep in on weekends—as we took the dog to the park for his early-morning romp.

When we returned home, we drank coffee for an hour, and went upstairs to clean up.

Sunday mornings now have a different schedule in my family.

Sunday service no longer begins at 11:00 a.m. The church recently introduced “contemporary” service and “traditional” service—and “traditional” service now begins at 9:30 a.m.

My parents, of course, attend “traditional” service, as my parents have no interest in hearing electric guitars during morning worship.

One of the disadvantages of this change of schedule is that we no longer have the opportunity to prepare and eat a leisurely Sunday breakfast prior to service, a longstanding tradition in my family we all very much cherished.

There was no breakfast on Sunday morning. Josh and I ate nothing, my parents ate nothing. We left the house at 9:00 a.m. without having so much as a bowl of cereal. The only member of the household that got fed Sunday morning was the dog.

I do not care for the early service hour—and I suspect we may all soon become Lutherans, the church in which both of my parents were raised. The Presbyterian Church seems, in recent years, to have adopted a few too many “new age” notions to suit our sensibilities.

My nephew now attends Sunday School, now held twice on Sunday mornings, once during the “traditional” service and a second time during the “contemporary” service. My nephew, of course, attends Sunday School during the “traditional” service, which means that he no longer sits with his parents during service. I don’t think that my nephew minds, but the rest of us rather miss not having him with us during service.

My brother and sister-in-law have decided to enroll my nephew in this summer’s Bible School at our church.

When I was a child, Bible School at our church lasted a full two weeks—but, over the intervening years, Bible School at our church has been severely curtailed. Bible School now lasts just three days. It will be held, half-days, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of next week.

Bible School is no longer free. Our church now charges $45.00 per participant. This fee I find troublesome, as our church is one of the wealthiest Presbyterian parishes—perhaps the very wealthiest—in the United States. Under such circumstances, to impose fees for Bible School attendance is, in my view, unforgivable.

My parents have grown increasingly concerned about our church’s undue concentration on financial matters. The church has enough money to operate into perpetuity, and yet the church is in constant asset-gathering mode. In disappointment and aggravation, my father has taken to calling the Presbytery “The Presbyterian Church And Depository Trust, LLC”.

After service, my middle brother took Josh and me home—my parents had a luncheon with my mother’s relatives—so that we might all change our clothes and retrieve the dog and go over to my older brother’s house for the day.

For lunch, we grilled hot dogs and hamburgers on my older brother’s back deck.

In the afternoon, we helped my older brother with yard work: mowing, weeding, trimming, hedging, raking, fertilizing.

At 5:00 p.m., my middle brother drove Josh and me home, because Josh and I had evening plans and we needed to get cleaned up.

Our scheduled activity: a 7:00 p.m. performance of “Arsenic And Old Lace” at the Guthrie Theater, which Josh and I were to attend with my parents. Sunday evening’s performance of “Arsenic And Old Lace” was to be the final performance of the Guthrie run, and my parents had obtained four tickets for the occasion.

A few weeks ago, my parents had given their subscription seats for an earlier performance of “Arsenic And Old Lace” to my older brother and my sister-in-law, who had used the tickets, taking my middle brother with them.

My older brother NEVER goes to the theater, but he had gone that night, and he had had a wonderful time, as had my sister-in-law and as had my middle brother.

“Arsenic And Old Lace” is what is called a “durable” comedy—the play has never fallen from favor since its premiere in 1941—and I understand the appeal of the work. Seemingly good-natured, gentle persons are revealed to be monstrous criminals; they view their criminal deeds as genuine and sincere acts of kindness. Nothing is what it seems to be on the surface; everything is topsy-turvy. The tension between the dotty but otherwise unremarkable if not mundane elderly sisters and the horrific nature of their crimes is one of the selling points of the play.

The play does not invite or allow the audience to criticize either crimes or criminals, largely because the perpetrators of the crimes are so charming and guileless and because the victims of the crimes are never allowed to become anything more than stage props.

The play has not a drop of meanness or spite in it. It is all sincerely, even bizarrely, middle-American—and everyone is let off the hook at play’s end by reason of insanity, a too-neat final wrap-up for such depraved moral failings.

I do not respond to “Arsenic And Old Lace”. In fact, I hate the play. I think it is a loathsome, manufactured, not particularly good—and not particularly funny—commercial comedy. I cannot succumb to the play’s supposed whimsy and I cannot succumb to the play’s supposed charm (I do not succumb to the contemporaneous “Harvey”, either).

Yet I enjoyed the Guthrie production, if only because it was a splendid display of stagecraft. Everything about the production was “right”, from the handsome and apt stage design to the meticulous casting, which was entirely admirable. I never expect to encounter a finer production of “Arsenic And Old Lace”.

I question, however, whether a theater supported by public funds should be producing such commercial work. According to the program booklet, the Guthrie Theater last presented “Arsenic And Old Lace” in 1975, which at least signifies that the Guthrie is not producing the play too often. Nonetheless, I do not believe that “Arsenic And Old Lace” belongs on the Guthrie boards at all.

Why is America’s leading theater devoting lavish resources—the production cost a mint—to the presentation of a corrupt, stale vehicle from the 1940s? “Arsenic And Old Lace”, in my view, is best left to the devices of civic theater, where it has enjoyed a prolonged life.

The Guthrie staging was offered on the thrust stage; the production was directed by Joe Dowling, Artistic Director of the Guthrie since 1995. Dowling, who came to Minneapolis from the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, certainly knows how to stage a play—but I am surprised that an Irishman found “Arsenic And Old Lace” to be so rewarding an enterprise that he chose to direct the play himself.

On the way home, we discussed why “Arsenic And Old Lace” has managed to continue to attract an audience.

My mother offered that the play must be viewed as divertissement, and nothing more—and that it could be enjoyed as such. In response, I noted that the play’s dialogue needed to be more sparkling in order for the play to succeed as divertissement. My mother’s response: American plays of the 1940s are not based upon sparkling dialogue but instead are based upon intricacies of plot—which is why so few American plays of the 1940s have remained in the repertory.

Josh opined that the mood of the war-clouded 1940s permeates “Arsenic And Old Lace”, and that the play may be accepted as period-piece surrealism, a frothy, one-evening release from the worries of war. Josh invoked the exactly contemporaneous “Blithe Spirit” as a parallel—Coward’s spectral, contrived comedy was unaccountably popular in London during the war years, just as “Arsenic And Old Lace” was conspicuously popular in New York during the same period.

My father said that one should not attempt to subject “Arsenic And Old Lace” to analysis, because doing so will lead to nothing but grief. The play, he said, is a take-it-or-leave-it artifact of its time, and must be enjoyed—or not—on its own terms.

I asked my father whether he liked “Arsenic And Old Lace”.

“Can’t stand the thing” was his response.

“But you seemed to be having a delightful evening” was my rejoinder.

“I did have a delightful evening” he said. “The production was faultless, the acting excellent, the pacing superb.” After a pause, he added, “And I never entered the theater expecting anything more than a couple of hours of slight entertainment—which was delivered.”

“Do you think such a commercial work has a place on the Guthrie stage?” was my next question.

“Something has to pay for the more arcane work” he said. “It is easy to be purist about such things if one is not responsible for finances.”

Of course, I understand such considerations, and I know that my father knows that I understand such considerations—and, still, I do not believe that “Arsenic And Old Lace” has a rightful place in the Guthrie repertory. The company needs to be much more imaginative in selecting its “popular” fare.

“Why don’t we discuss why Joe Dowling avoids modern British plays, preferring modern Irish plays instead?” asked my father. “THERE is a subject for discussion.”

And, for the rest of the drive home, we talked about modern British plays that Guthrie audiences seldom have a chance to encounter. (“I’ve had it up to my ears with Irish plays” was one of my mother’s remarks.)

When we arrived home, we had a late, light dinner, because no one had eaten since lunchtime. We ate scrambled eggs and toast, and called it a day.

This week will be pretty low-key for us.

I will be working on our itinerary for Britain.

Josh will be studying for the Minnesota Bar Exam—and working on our itinerary for Britain whenever he needs a break from the Bar materials.

We have made the dining room Josh’s study center. It is right off the kitchen, so he will not feel isolated, and he may move back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room as his mood prevails.

My mother is helping us plan the itinerary for Britain.

The dog is reading Schiller.

Tomorrow night, in a very rare Tuesday night concert by the Minnesota Orchestra, we will hear Aksnav Omso conduct music of Beethoven and Sibelius, the only two composers Aksnav Omso has programmed in Minneapolis these last several years.

It will be fascinating to hear how the conductor’s 519th Minneapolis traversal of Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 will differ from his countless earlier Twin Cities renditions of the work.

Summer Travel Plans

Joshua is dealing with final exams and graduation plans and bar exam preparations, I am dealing with work and movers, my parents are dealing with a gravely ill relative—and all of us are itching to take an interesting trip.

My parents had planned to spend two weeks in Provence during late March/early April, but the illness of one of my mother’s siblings caused my parents to cancel such plans. My parents may attempt to travel to Provence in September or October of this year—but, they say, it is far more likely that they will wait until March/April 2012 before scheduling a trip to the South Of France (my parents particularly want to visit Provence in early Spring).

In the meantime, my parents want to take an interesting trip—and so does my middle brother, and so do Josh and I.

We have decided that late summer will be a particularly good time for a trip. It suits the schedules of my parents, it suits the schedule of my middle brother, and it suits Josh’s schedule and my schedule.

Josh and I cannot go anywhere in June or July, as Josh will be studying for and taking the Minnesota Bar Examination during those months. For Josh and me, our only window for a trip will be from Thursday, July 28 (the day after the final day of the Minnesota Bar Examination) through Monday, September 5 (on the following day, Josh will start a new job and I will return to my old firm in Minneapolis).

In the last few days, we have made some tentative plans.

Our intent is to undertake a short trip to Great Britain, departing Minneapolis on Friday, August 5, and returning on Sunday, August 14. We plan to spend three days/four nights in London, and afterward spend five days/four nights visiting a few attractions in Southern England: Portsmouth, The Isle Of Wight, Brighton, Leeds Castle, Royal Tunbridge Wells and Chartwell.


Despite countless trips to Britain, and despite an eighteen-day jaunt through Southern England as recently as 2008, none of us has ever visited the above-mentioned attractions in Southern England. We particularly look forward to The Isle Of Wight and a visit to Osborne House.

The last time we went on a trip was March of last year, when we toured Greece.

We were, alas, disappointed with Greece—but we know that we will not be disappointed with a return to Britain.

We would like to extend our trip by adding a week in a continental city, but August is not a good month for visiting Europe. The weather should be mild in Britain, but the continent is fraught with problems in August, hot weather and crowds being the most serious difficulties to endure.